Well, I travelled down on the train to Sheffield two Tuesdays ago (the 10th). The coach journy was priced at £49 and would have taken 13 hours (fuck that shit), but a getting a young persons railcard, then a discounted super return saver came to just £48. I used to be very into using coach travel, but people change. I took a some photos on the journey down and up which can be found through the new image gallery script I put up on my site yesterday.

I met Daisy outside the Sheffield Uni student union, and sufficed to say I was very very happy to be with her again. We spent most of our time in her flat doing the sort of things lovers do; arguing (not really). Unfortunately Daisy’s computer was b0rked so we couldn’t watch the Depeche ModeOne Night in Paris DVD I got her for her birthday, but we had fun listening (and dancing) to Toyah‘s greatest hits, my second present (for those who read poll results on Daisy’s journal, she liked the third present too).

I spent Thursday afternoon carrying said b0rken (and heavy) PC around Sheffield town centre but without actually finding somewhere to get it fixed (damn unhelpful uni techs). Then Daisy fainted in the street so we got a taxi home. On Friday evening, and after some very nice kebab, we went out with and some of his friends to The Bunker, a new fetish goth/industrial night in Sheffield City Hall’s massive main room. Apparently the organisers of the night neglected to tell the City Hall people there would be podium dancers and cabaret performers coming along and doing their thing until the last moment, at which point they said “not in our venue”. The music was fair enough; not that leftfield, but not too middle-of-the-road either, although the sound system and acoustics of the room detracted from the atmosphere a bit. I found it slightly disorienting to dance due to the combination of a high roof, a massive square dance space and under dance floor disco stylee lights (which apparently featured in the video for Pulp’s Disco 2000), but I managed to soldier on with my trusty glowsticks (even though they were uncomfortable to hold tight due to the fact they were hexagon shaped). I had a little chat with but unfortunately couldn’t think of much to say at the time. Afterwards, Daisy and I made our way to ‘s flat and saw briefly again before he exited. , his flatmates, Daisy and I then proceeded to get quite stoned. Then we all fell asleep. The next morning (well, afternoon) we wondered home, relaxed a little, then I packed my things and said goodbye to Daisy before getting a taxi to the train station.

“Non-religious beliefs should be taught as part of compulsory religious education, a think tank report suggests.” [link]. Progress, but not a solution. This doesn’t go far enough; I want to see proper philosophy (or at least real-life decision helping philosophy) taught on the national curriculum. The lack of hardcore thought provocation in schools these days is leading kids to think that discussing ‘life, the universe and everything’ is something to be seen as ‘ironic’, or even worse, something reserved for boring people or sad-cases.

“The main reformist coalition taking part in Iran’s controversial election says it expects to lose after many candidates were disqualified.” [link]. I would definitely not like to be living there. P.S. Apparently the two main Iranian reformist newspapers have been shut down by the government one day before the elections for publishing information on the MPs who had been blocked from standing for election. Charming.

If you have a spare 20 minuets, and are interested, have a gander at this essay, titled Validity of Law. It contains a good introduction to (and differences between) the jurisprudence concepts of natural law, legal positivism, and legal realism. Either that, or this, a critique of presidential candidate blogs.

I’m in the process of clearing out my links-that-need-to-be-mentioned draft post, so here’s some old/new news/links. I promise I’ll write about real life soon.

“Police and trading standards officers are investigating the sale of sweets called ‘cannabis lollies‘.”

“German band Eisbrecher has decided to make a statement for its fans and for music consumers in general and is releasing their album (“Eisbrecher”) including a bonus DVD with 2 blank CD-Rs which have the same label as the CD itself.”

Here are a couple of very interesting artists I’ve found through the various experimental music sections on epitonic.com:

Alp (Roger Horberry) takes found sound recordings from various sources in his apartment (including heating ducts, a washing machine, a boiling kettle, a disk drive, a microwave, doors, and a fridge) and outputs a very interesting form of dronology that makes one wonder what the world might sound like if our hearing was highly advanced.

L.O.S.D.‘s music is based around “numerology and mathematics”, “built on the fundaments of pure sine waves in the lower range”, a concept that I’ve always been interested in and plan to touch on when I get a chance to create my own music, i.e., taking a single tone and modifying, filtering, etc, it (although I plan on a more platonic-form-tone-dronology meets sid-station meets electro-funk/clash meets cliqhop sound).

I’m back again; details of my trip to follow at some point this week. I haven’t touched a [working] computer all week, and the nightly build of my jabber client I was using before I left was b0rked, so I have a bit of catching up to do.